


A Soldier's Landscape

by eggs_and_toast



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Scars, uh shoot how do i tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:49:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1401979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggs_and_toast/pseuds/eggs_and_toast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt: One older soldier examines his/her body and notices--and relives--all the scars they find there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soldier's Landscape

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting on Ao3! If I did something wrong, please tell me. ಥ_ಥ
> 
> Original prompt: http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/2124.html?thread=1642572

When you’re in the Scouting Legion, your battle record isn’t just a couple of numbers written in soldier profiles and on reports. It’s also in the landscape of your body, in the dips of missing pieces of skin and across the mountain ridges of scar tissues. Being a Scout isn’t like being on the Garrison; you get roughed up from dodging, rolling, and fighting your way out of a titan’s grasp just before the teeth bite down.

He looked down at his body and sighed. His landscape was beaten, worn, and if the doctor was right, ready to throw in the towel.

There were the standard bruises from the 3DM harnesses; those were the mark of any soldier that did more than just patrol some streets and knock the heads of drunkards together. He lazily ran a finger along the one across his pecs, and noticed that even his fingers were scarred; thin white lines, patchy scrapes, and horrific looking fingernails graced both hands. He moved his hand to lightly scratch the dip in his left bicep; that one had been a close call, having barely slid his arm out before the titan bit it off. That was a couple of years ago, though. Now it just itched and needed to be slathered in a flowery lotion every now and then. No need to even mention his elbows; he wasn’t sure if they were pointed anymore, they were probably ground flat.

Mind numb, he pushed the rest of his stormy thoughts out of the way and moved his hands to other scars, other stories. The marks on his stomach…that incident gave him nightmares for a week. He could still hear the screams of Balder and Mica when they fell to their doom, while he had miraculously gotten his wires wrapped around a sturdy tree branch (he paid the tree back with his blood, the bark was unexpectedly sharp and ruthless, though compared to his comrades’ fate, it was nothing). He couldn’t reach them, but he knew there were claw marks down the left side of the small of his back. He didn’t realize that titans had fingernails until he felt them dig into him. There was even a scar on his rump…he didn’t like talking about that one; it was bad enough whenever someone who didn’t know the story cracks a joke when they see it in the shower.

There were large shapes that looked like pock marks down his right thigh. A few thin lines from two different surgeries ran up and down his calf on the same leg. He had broken every toe on both feet at least twice, some more than that. The list of other bones he had broken was a long one. His knees were in the same shape as his elbows. And on his left leg…

He felt the pain rush back, but it wasn’t pain from the missing part of vital leg muscle that he needed in order to walk. It was from hearing the doctor tell him that it was time to sign the paperwork that would officially discharge him honorably from the military due to injury.

Forget being able to keep fighting; he couldn’t even walk normally without a cane.

He leaned back on his hands (his rough, beaten hands), and stared hard at the ceiling of the infirmary. Shouldn’t he be happy? No more living in fear of who’ll be eaten next, no more wondering how long the new guy in the bunk below him will last, no more glancing up at the blue sky thinking it’d be the last time.

Instead, he was frustrated. So very, very frustrated.

There was a new hope now. Eren Yeager, the boy with titan powers, the boy who took back Trost and gave humanity their first victory against the titans. He had never talked to Eren personally, nor seen him in titan form, but the stories were quite astonishing, if not sometimes over-embellished. But anyone can look at Trost now and believe. There was also new blood in the Scouting Legion now; apparently most of the top ten graduates had joined, instead of taking the safe route and joining the Military Police (he himself didn’t even place in the top twenty and all the top ten in his squad joined the Police). They were talented, fresh and strong, and him, he was…crippled.

Humanity was finally beginning to fight back…and he couldn’t raise his swords with them anymore.

He clutched at his left knee, nails digging into his skin. It had seemed so trivial compared to past wounds, just a small bit missing from his leg after the titan pinched him, but it was enough to keep him grounded. In truth, he was lucky to come back from the trip outside Karanese alive; the guy in the bunk below him lasted a week this time, and he lost yet another friend, another comrade.

A slow laugh wrenched from his chest. It was ironic, that he was actually cursing the end of his soldier days that he had always secretly wished for, and finally received.

And it was painful for him to note that he finally realized how badly he wanted to help humanity win, just as he could no longer fight.


End file.
